| 7 December 43 BC | Roman Empire, Italy [births and deaths] | Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, orator, author of De republica/On the Republic, having inflamed the Senate against the Roman consul Mark Antony by his brilliant series of speeches The Philippics (in which he accuses Antony of aiming at dictatorship), is executed at the order of the Second Triumvirate, in Formia, Italy (c. 63). |
| 7 December 909 | Fatimid Caliphate [political events] | After overthrowing the Sunni Aghlabid dynasty of Kairouan (in modern Tunisia), Sa'id ibn-Husayn is proclaimed as Ubaydullah al-Mahdi (‘the divinely guided one’) in Tunis and sets up an Ismailite (Shiite) caliphate in opposition to the Sunni caliphate of Baghdad (in modern Iraq). Al-Mahdi founds the Fatimid dynasty (named after the Islamic prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima, from whom Sa'id claims descent). |
| 7 December 983 | Italy, Holy Roman Empire [political events] | When the Holy Roman Emperor and German king Otto II dies in Rome, Italy, from malaria, he is succeeded by his three-year-old son, Otto III, under the guardianship of his mother, Theophano. |
| 7 December 1796 | USA [elections] | John Adams defeats Thomas Jefferson in the US presidential election by three electoral votes to become the second president of the USA. Jefferson is elected vice-president. |
| 7 December 1836 | USA [elections] | Americans elect Martin Van Buren president. No vice-presidential candidate wins a majority, compelling the Senate to select the vice president for the first time in US history. The Senate chooses Kentucky politician Richard M Johnson. |
| 7 December 1872–26 May 1876 | UK [earth sciences] | The British ship Challenger undertakes the world's first major oceanographic survey. Under the command of the Scottish naturalist Wyville Thomson, the crew collect marine animals and water samples, dredge and core samples of the ocean bottom, and make hundreds of temperature and depth measurements. |
| 7 December 1916 | United Kingdom [law and government] | David Lloyd George is appointed British prime minister and forms a coalition government. On 10 December he forms a war cabinet, including the Conservatives Arthur Balfour, Andrew Bonar Law, Lord Curzon, and Lord Milner, and the Labour leader Arthur Henderson. |
| 7 December 1941 | USA, Japan [World War II (1939–45)] | Japanese naval aircraft make a surprise air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four battleships and 140 aircraft are destroyed and 2,330 troops killed. |
| 7 December 1970 | West Germany, Poland [treaties] | West Germany and Poland sign a treaty, formally recognizing the Oder–Neisse Line as the frontier between East Germany and Poland. |
| 7–10 December 1987 | USA, USSR [diplomacy] | At a US–Soviet summit in Washington, DC, US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agree to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear forces. |
